


sat on a fence but it don't work

by 24601lesbians



Series: under pressure [1]
Category: Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance
Genre: F/F, M/M, MTF Gerard, Makeup, experimenting with makeup, no drag yet but he'll get to it, patrick works in a flower shop, pete is not a creep.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-02
Updated: 2016-08-02
Packaged: 2018-07-28 20:31:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7655680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/24601lesbians/pseuds/24601lesbians
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gee backhands Patrick’s upper arm. “You told me he knew.”<br/>“Shut up or tell me,” Pete says, and they both look up. “Please.”<br/>Wearily, Patrick cuts three Cokes out of the plastic and hands Pete one. “I’ll be a few minutes.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	sat on a fence but it don't work

Patrick's had a long day. It’s fall and all the mopey fifteen-year-olds (and one of the regulars, Joe, but he’s fucking polite about it) want their fall arrangements and homecoming corsages. He gets it, he really does, but some lines should be drawn. Three people came into the shop with complicated orders at 9:59; since Mark was gone and Gee was busying herself with a combination of mopping and sorting pots, he did—and redid, because two of the customers said their flowers were all wrong while the third scowled at the ribbon selection—all of them.

He wanted to watch a ridiculous, lighthearted movie. Now he's hung up on why everybody uses drag as some humorous fallback. It stings and he ends up irritated enough that he shuts it off and gets out his new guitar.

Pete locks the door behind him and turns to see Patrick on the futon, spooning a guitar and drooling a tiny bit while his phone gently spouts Queen beside his knee. The guitar looks somewhere between old and expensive, and the way the neck is out of Patrick's arms makes him nervous. Carefully, he pries it away, picks up the pizza box off the table and replaces it with the guitar. Much better. 

Pete's first day back in the apartment after visiting Andy for the weekend is quiet. Not that there's much of the day left, at quarter to midnight, but he's totally beat.

x

Patrick wakes up on the couch, one splotch of his shirt smelling like last night's pizza grease. He hauls himself up and decides that he has enough energy to make pancakes. He's rewarded with Pete's sleepy smile and awkwardly realizes that yes, Pete is back. Eventually Patrick moves to the shower.

Pete left for work twenty minutes ago, but Patrick doesn't face the mirror head-on just yet. He closes his eyes, and gives himself a sidelong look, cups the side of his face with one hand to obscure the patch that he shaved a bit unevenly. Patrick looks soft, just this side of too pale to be pretty.

He doesn't have any makeup, and chances are anything bright will look too dramatic against his skin. But he thinks about it, every time he has to walk through the makeup in the drugstore to get to the pharmacy when Pete's forgotten his meds. Even the nail polish is tempting.

Patrick has given up on trying to figure out what Pete would think. Patrick's met his dad a few times, which has given him a glimpse of the "no man in MY house will do that" attitudes that Pete had to grow up with. He's pretty sure that didn't rub off on him; his mental image of teenage Pete is a hell of a rebel. Now and then, though, some slightly derogatory thing will fly out of his mouth with ten thousand more thoughts. He lets it slide most of the time, especially after guilt flashes across Pete's face.

A few weeks ago Patrick asked Gee what she thought about guys with nail polish. She just sent him some semi-coy smile with her little teeth bared, and followed it up with about ten minutes of earnest rambling about gender norms and "the motherfuckin' 'boys don't cry' type shit is  _ so _ wrong, okay Patrick? It's more important that you experience the whole _range_." He felt better about wanting little things after that, but still just the wrong side of brave enough to do it.

x

He breaks on a Thursday. Target has this sale on eyeliners, and they're right next to the nail clippers he plans on purchasing to replace the ones he stepped on that morning. The eyeliner is right there and it's totally right in his face. Unfair advantage. He closes his eyes briefly so he can steel himself without drumming on the cart, and just grabs one. When it slides under the socks and other items that were already in the cart, he doesn't bother attempting to, like, _un_ -hide it. 

Or look at it, until he's safely in his car, comfortable enough in the sagging seat to reach into the bag. He pulls out the little tube—he read somewhere that they're easier to manage than pencils—and peels away the plastic facing. When he pulls off the cap and glides it across his hand, it's a beautiful shade of blue deeper than navy, but still bright.

He flips it from his left hand to his right, back to his left, and drops it because he feels a little shaky. It rolls into the sink, which is fucking _gross_ , but it had the cap on it, so he’s not super worried about getting dry toothpaste in his eye accidentally.

He breathes, pops the cap off, and slides the color across his right lash line, then looks into the mirror. It’s a little wobbly, but it looks fucking _good_. His left eye looks even better, part of which he credits to confidence granting him a more steady hand. The eye-catching kind of pretty is a box he can definitely check now.

x

Maybe the eyeliner is a gateway drug. Maybe it's Target's stupid coupons that convince him. Maybe it's Maybelline, okay? But now he has a really light—the lightest one he found, actually—pink lipstick, some nice nail polish that matches the eyeliner, and clear mascara with an eyelash curler. It's very shiny. Working in a flower shop means he can’t just up and splurge whenever, so he thinks through his choices, or likes to think he does. He still has to save a bit, though.

The third round of makeup (foundation and powder) is going well until Patrick gets to the checkout and sees the magazines. Usually he just glances at them as something to do while he waits for Mr. Fifty Items to finish bitching at the cashier, but today they just keep pulling at his attention. He finally looks, and his confidence sinks below where is was the first time he walked in with any makeup in his cart. 

These magazine girls are so effortless. And he's seen the exposés Gee and her brother and her girlfriend have passed around on Facebook (most of his friends are either hers or Pete’s), which show how much styling and cruel attitude really goes into magazine pages. They’re not effortless at all, just so very feminine, and that’s totally not something he was born with. He feels disappointed, and seeing the two youngish women in line in front of him underlines that.

He lightens up when the radio station he likes isn’t staticky today, and finds himself humming when he parks and walks inside to put everything away.

x

Curling his eyelashes was a horrible idea. Smudging a little eyeliner on? Worse. Bringing up dancing when they’re standing around in Gee’s kitchen for cookie night? The absolute worst. And now Gee and Pete have matching wide-eyed expressions.

"I know you sing," Gee says with a crinkle growing between her eyebrows. "When you do dishes, and when my car was freaking out so you drove me to work."

"Sings at home, too," Pete adds.

"But you don't—"

"Don't or won't?"

They can fucking smell fear and Patrick wants to _die_. "Can't."

“Will you try? Look at Pete’s sad little face.” Pete sticks out his bottom lip. “Look at  _ my _ sad face, come on.” Gee copies Pete and fails miserably when she tries not to giggle. She covers her mouth to avoid letting cookie crumbs fall on her black shirt and almost-black jeans.

“Jesus, you two are really something else.”

“We know,” Pete says proudly, offering an arm for Patrick to take. Gee links hers through his other side and they wait him out. He takes Pete’s arm. These are people he trusts more than most other people put together, except his mom. But his mom’s not here and wow, this isn’t really the time to bring her up.

Patrick reaches for a cookie and Pete lets go of him. Cookies are important. He lets Pete have a piece of it, for knowing one of the rules of life. He zones out for a minute and accidentally lets himself be persuaded into not just dancing, but picking the music, which is weird because Gee and Pete both have amazing music. He lets it go.

Gee blinks when he twirls her around and she ends up in his face. She’s taller than he is, so it’s not that awkward. She just smiles and doesn’t step on him when he hastily spins her away again. He mentally crosses his fingers.  _ No suspicions,_ please, _Gee keep your mouth shut_. 

He’s gotten himself some makeup remover that works well. He likes the smell and the way it makes his skin a little softer. The cover flies off of the powder one day, so he buys himself a little bag for it all before he washes the pants. The bag isn’t anything special, he made sure, just a little black affair that looks like a truncated pencil case. The only problem is that it  _ smells _ unmistakably like makeup. He figures folding it into the pants will solve that for now.

He finds himself making a habit of the mascara. He doesn’t use too much, and he’s careful to make sure it gets put away in the pockets of horribly ugly (completely grotesque, even though he’d never say it to his dad’s face) reindeer pajama pants he never wears.

He's actually pretty satisfied with makeup for now, but he has skirts and fucking  _ dresses  _ on the brain every ten seconds. He's really, really afraid that something will slip. Then he nudges his thoughts toward happy things, which leads him to the memory of dancing with Pete and Gee. Which leads him to thinking of dancing with Pete _in a dress_ , thus ruining all his progress.

In a way, though, that kind of happiness/dread combo spurs his kernel of an idea forward. He knows he won't be able to get through a phone call without stuttering and hanging up shamefaced, so he's got his keyboard pulled up to text Gee already. It's still very,  _ very  _ stressful. He pushes himself to send it, and then throws his phone across the couch into the big pillow. Then throws himself across the couch into the small pillow.

“I’m too young to die,” he says mournfully into the fabric.

Next to his ankle, the phone buzzes. And Pete walks in.

“Can I talk to you?”

Patrick tries to breathe. _Please don’t tell me you found something or that I’m confused or that you’re moving in with someone else because I weird you out_.

“Dude. Hey. Relax.” Pete sits on the coffee table in front of him, which creaks, but holds. “I just want to make sure that you’re okay. You seem like you’re on edge even after you take the day off, you know?”

Pete is sincere right now, he knows. But. He can't deal with all of this yet. “I’m good, it’s. Good. Doing okay, and I’m making enough off of the tips that we might be able to use the heat more when winter starts to really hit.” He grabs his phone and stands, turning back to Pete. “You bought more toilet paper, right?”

He looks bewildered. “Yeah, this morning.”

Patrick locks himself in the bathroom and opens up his phone.

_ For starters I like Target and I’m grateful that you didn’t want to shop for clothes at Walmart because their selection makes me cringe and NO ONE puts anything (1/2) _

_ back on the right racks ugh but you do know there’s a Kohl’s AND a Rue21 like twenty minutes away, right? Kohl’s has dude stuff + 21 has me stuff (2/2) _

He can practically hear her staring him down. He types out  _ Okay  _ and waits, in case she says something else. In less than a minute she asks him if he really is okay.

_ I know we’ve only been shopping like once, Gee. I just wanted to (1/1) _

She replies with a string of emojis, including a skull, the salsa dancer, and the watermelon.

_ Do you want to go friday (1/1) _

_ Have some mercy, Stump. Mark put me on morning shift. How bout sat? I’ll drive (1/1) _

Gee is a saint and Patrick loves her to pieces; she’s one of two people, three if he counts Mark (he doesn’t), that Patrick the first month after he moved here. He’d honestly be more comfortable with Andy driving, and he’s only heard  _ stories _ about the guy from Pete. Gee tends to get distracted, and she’s definitely a center-line magnet.

_ I can pick you up. I’ll be running errands before anyway (1/1) _

_ I only offered to be polite (1/1) _

He smiles to himself and tucks his phone away. Three days.

 

When he pulls up in front of the house Gee and her brother share, she’s still shuffling in fuzzy socks and running her fingers through her hair, wide eyed.

“Long night?”

She shoves him halfheartedly when Lindsey starts laughing from the living room. “Shut your damn mouth,” Gee splutters. Patrick steps inside and she closes the door behind him.

“Which one of us?” Lindsey calls.

“Both, but mostly _you_ ,” Gee’s brother shouts from upstairs.

“There are two floors between where we sleep, _Michael_. I can remind you of the time we came home and saw things happening in the kitchen.”

Mikey leans on the side of the stairs to glare at Gee. “He was hot.”

“Right.”

“It was three in the morning and you were supposed to be either out or in your room.”

“Of  course ,” Lindsey says primly before she winks at Patrick.

After the standard offer of coffee, she goes downstairs to change and they leave after about ten minutes, chattering with each other in the car until they get to the parking lot and Patrick eventually ends up silent. On the way inside, Gee bumps him gently toward the men’s section with the sweaters he made a beeline for last time. He swallows.

“You first.”

Gee cuts a steadfast look at him, and it feels like she’s seeing through his bones and like, reading his brain, but she doesn’t say anything. Still, the way she walks to the nearest rack of glitter-dotted black t-shirts without looking back at him leads him to believe she’s unconvinced of whatever he tried to tell her without telling her. It’s confusing him.

He edges toward a different rack, trying to pass it off as an absent move to give Gee space when something else catches his eye. It’s all blatant femininity and watercolor splashes dripping from the shoulder seams, sort of swoopy in the way it’s draped on the hanger. The neck is more wide than deep, unlike the last billion shirts he’s walked past.

He can’t reach blindly, like the first eyeliner, so he mentally compares himself to Gee to get a grasp of the size he should take into the dressing room. Sets his jaw and pulls it over his head. When he raises his eyes from the floor to the mirror, he takes it in. He looks like a deer in the headlights. Once he schools his expression into a get-out-of-my-way-or-die bitchface, it cracks almost immediately and he laughs.

It feels nice.

“Patrick?”

His stomach is flipping at breakneck speed. He looks back to himself. “Fuck,” slips out of his almost-frown.

“Patrick?”

“Wrong way,” he says into the hallway. Gee’s footsteps turn around and he waves a hand over the top of the door once before withdrawing.

“Just checking,” she mumbles.

“Gee, would you--if you’re not trying anything on, will you just. Tell me what you think?” He tries to ask loosely enough that it doesn’t sound calculated, like he spent the last few nights planning out exactly how to ask her and combine it with showing her so he wouldn’t throw up.

He unlocks the door; there’s no way she doesn’t hear or notice the movement, but she doesn’t push.

“I can’t,” he murmurs, bands around his chest squeezing the living hell out of him.

“Okay.” Pause. “May I?”

His voice is going to do something stupid if he tries more than one syllable. “Yeah.” 

She nods jerkily at him. He watches her face clear from a clouded expression and she’s smiling softly.

Patrick tries to extricate himself from her hug and she holds him more tightly. “Perfect,” she says forcefully. He can breathe. He can breathe, mostly. That’s not his body’s fault now, though.

“Gee.”

She shushes him.

“Gee, I can’t breathe.”

“Okay.” She doesn’t move.

 

He hears Pete unlocking the door when he’s put the shirt on to see what it looks like with a full face of makeup. “Shit, shit, shit,” he says helplessly as he uses the remover and a few squares of toilet paper and prays that it won’t make his face red. He shoves the stained paper into a drawer. Opening the bathroom door up, Patrick snatches at paper towels and bleach.

Pete cuts a glance at him as he goes through the hallway by the bathroom. “Did we get new air freshener?”

“It’s the end of an old sample that was in the back of the cupboard under the sink.” He thanks any possibly real, possibly listening deities that he’s a fast thinker.

It’s when Pete says he’s going to bed that Patrick realizes he’s still in the shirt.

x

Pete doesn’t bring it up. And that’s kind of a nice thought until the options roll back to A: tell him, and B: he finds out somehow.

Gee comes over Tuesday night because it’s Patrick’s turn to host cookie night, but he’s bordering twitchy before she’s even set down the six pack of Coke. Patrick’s awkward movements are all the opening she needs to point one red-tipped black nail at Pete. He glares at her ineffectually from Pete’s side. “You have an issue, fight it down until  _ I’m _ in your line of sight.”

Patrick can pretty much  _ hear _ his confusion and turns red. "Noticed and noted."

“I didn’t tell him,” Patrick hisses to her, barely able to work the words out of his throat.

Pete hops up and sits on the counter, probably to get closer to eye level with Gee.

Gee closes her mouth with a snap, then angrily pushes her hand into her purse. She reapplies the red lipstick--stolen from Lindsey--pointedly while making eyebrow motions at him. She caps the lipstick with an air of finality and shoots him a warning look, but it’s evident she’s reading between the same lines Patrick is.

"Backpedaling to the topic at hand,” Pete starts before Gee holds up a hand. He sits back again in a resigned sort of way, knowing Gee’s stubbornness as well as Patrick’s at this point.

Gee backhands Patrick’s upper arm. “You told me he knew.”

“Shut up or tell me,” Pete says, and they both look up. “Please.”

Wearily, Patrick cuts three Cokes out of the plastic and hands Pete one. “I’ll be a few minutes.” He takes a long drink from his own can, and pushes the third into Gee’s manicured hand on his way out. “Not hiding,” he says to her as conversationally as he can manage.

 

No youtube video says to do eyeliner first under any circumstances because the universe set makeup routines in some kind of order. He does wash his face to start, but follows it with eyeliner, slim, even blue lines on his upper lash line. Then comes the lipstick. Seeing as it’s still in the plastic, the nail polish is for another day. He curls his eyelashes and applies the mascara with a now-practiced hand. Foundation and powder take a bit longer to set evenly, but he hasn’t fucked up yet. He decides against the shirt for now.

“Pete? Gee,” he says calmly, raising his voice slightly. 

Behind the door, he can hear “just fucking relax Gee,  _ what _ is your deal?”

“Stand behind me,” she all but commands, much closer to the door now. “May I?” she directs at Patrick.

“I can do it,” he says quietly. He opens the door.

Pete looks taken aback, but is clearly warming to the whole Patrick-in-makeup thing. He’s beaming and utterly oblivious to Gee’s attempts to gauge his reaction. “Patrick. Hi.”

“Hi,” Patrick answers, deadpan.

He lets out a breath and looks to Gee to see if he has permission or whatever to lean in the doorway, both hands carefully behind his back. “You’re really fucking pretty.”


End file.
